Ex-Louisiana Judge Jeff Perilloux Convicted of Molesting Teen Girls

Jeff Perilloux, full name Elzey Jeffrey Perilloux, will serve 14 years in prison for the multiple counts of sex crimes he was convicted of committing against teen girls, some of whom were his daughters’ friends, according to The New Orleans Advocate.

Perilloux, 53, won his judgeship in 2016, yet was prevented from hearing any cases starting in May of 2018, when accusations of sexual misconduct were leveled against him, The Advocate reported.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Perilloux Was an Assistant District Attorney for St. John Parish

According to LawyerDB.com, Perilloux graduated from Southeastern Louisana College in 1989 and the Loyola University of New Orleans in 1993. He went on to practice in various areas of law including real estate, personal injury, government, wills and successions and other forms of civil litigation.

He started his own practice — E Jeffrey Perilloux Law Office — which is listed by Google as permanently closed.

According to a search of the Lousiana State Bar Association, Perilloux was admitted to the bar in October of 1993.

The New Orleans Advocate reported that Perilloux spent 12 years serving as the assistant district attorney for St. John Parish and that he was also the parish government’s top legal advisor from 2004 to 2016.

2. Perilloux Successfully Ran for Judge in 2016

Perilloux became a candidate for the Division B seat on Louisiana’s 40th Judicial District Court in St. John the Baptist Parish on July 20, 2016, according to court documents.

Perilloux was the subject of a petition filed in 2016 by his primary candidate opponent, Robert Snyder, during that election. In the petition, Snyder claimed that Perilloux should be considered ineligible as a candidate because he did not live in the precinct boundaries of the seat.

In August of 2016, The courts sided with Perilloux, who had asserted that there was no such requirement that candidates live within those boundaries. Perilloux was reimbursed $2,500 in attorney’s fees and allowed to proceed with his candidacy.

According to Ballotpedia, Perilloux defeated his general election opponent, Nghana Lewis Gauff, by 310 votes with 54% of support out of the 3,314 ballots cast.

“I actually have court set on Jan. 3,” Perilloux said in an interview reported by L’Observateur. “There is no real time to learn on the job as we go. These next three weeks I am going to spend, frankly, doing as much as I can so the people get exactly what they deserve from me, which will be the very best that I can offer.”

As of October 20, he was still listed on the St. John the Baptist Parish website of 40th Judicial District Court judges.

3. Perilloux Was the Subject of a Controversial Traffic Stop in 2010

In 2010, a state trooper saw Perilloux’s vehicle sitting in the middle of the road at night without any lights on, according to local news station FOX-8. However, when he attempted to pull the car over, Perilloux slowly took off, ignoring the trooper’s orders to stop. Then, Perilloux pulled into a gas station where he was confronted by the trooper in a contentious conversation.

During a later interaction, Perilloux attempted to throw his title of St. John Parish attorney around to get a slap on the wrist, video shows. The officer repeatedly tells Perilloux to get out of the car. Here is the interaction that follows, according to dash-cam footage posted on YouTube:

(Trooper:) Do not move!

(Perilloux:) I won’t.

(Trooper:) Why are you pulling off?

(Perilloux:) What are you talking about?

(Trooper:) I’m behind you trying to talk to you and you pull off from me. Why are you sitting in the middle of the road?
Where are you going?

(Perilloux:) I’m going home.

(Trooper:) Why were you stopped in the middle of the road with no lights on? Now I come up to talk to you to find out what’s going on, and you pull off, as I’m telling you to stop and I’m screaming at you. Then you pull in here and keep going. Then I tell you to keep your hands up and get out of the car, and you’re going to reach into a spot that I can’t see into the car.

(Trooper:) How much you had to drink tonight?

(Perilloux:) Nothing.

(Trooper:) Nothing at all? What’s that odor of alcoholic beverage coming from your breath that I smell? That’s nothing?

(Perilloux:) No, I was at a function.

When the trooper and Perilloux were having a calmer conversation, Perilloux tried to coax the officer into letting a St. John Parish deputy to drive him home.

(Perilloux:) You have a St. John officer here. Can you just tell him to perhaps get me home?

(Trooper:) He didn’t stop you, sir, I did.

(Perilloux:) I know sir, but sir, you don’t know who I am. Do you know who I am? I’m the parish attorney.
You are going to embarrass me, the parish attorney. That’s fine.

(Trooper:) Turn around, sir. Turn around.

(Perilloux:) Hey, do what you gotta do. Thank you, sir, that’s great.”

(Trooper:) Turn around, put your hands behind your back.

(Perilloux:) Do you know who I am?

(Trooper:) No sir.

(Perilloux:) Sir, I am an assistant district attorney.

(Trooper:) Right now, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.

(Perilloux:) You are degrading me right now m***********, I am an assistant district attorney. You are degrading me… horrible.

The trooper escorted Perilloux to the back of the squad car where Perilloux escalated his words, threatening to call the trooper’s boss.

(Perilloux:) Who has the f******* parish attorney and ruins him…? Do you understand that? Do you think I’m going to sit back and take that? The very next thing I do is talk to your boss. But I know you don’t care.

(Trooper:) Mr. Perilloux —

(Perilloux:) No, sweetheart.

(Trooper:) Mr. Perilloux, listen to me, okay? You need to, you need to mind what you say and ensure that you don’t make any threats.

(Perilloux:) Congratulations! You’ve taken the parish attorney and made him a f******.
I did nothing. You could have said you know what, Jeff, can I follow you home? I’m a State Trooper; I’m going to follow you home. But you didn’t. You decided to be an a******. That’s your choice, not mine. And that’s okay with me. I am the parish attorney, I’m not some little lowlife.

Even after he was taken into the station, FOX-8 reported that Perilloux was still angry.

The report says Perilloux came in “with slurred speech and a strong odor of an unknown alcoholic beverage… repeated countless times that he has been the parish attorney for ten years and is an ADA for St. John.” The officer wrote, “Perilloux repeatedly yelled ‘[expletive] you’ and made obscene gestures.” He then told them to “go [expletive] Tom Daley,” the St. John district attorney. And officers wrote that he said “I will destroy you… when he is DA in two years, he will remember what we did to him.”

The station reported that Perilloux refused to take a breath test and swore at the officer when the officer warned him that refusal would mean that his driver’s license would be suspended for a year.

FOX-8 reported that Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche wrote in his report that Perilloux “threatens (the officer), to have his job and destroy him. That is crossing the line.” The Commission filed a complaint with Louisiana’s State Bar Association in relation to this incident.

However, the prosecutor declined to prosecute public intimidation and the Driving While Intoxicated charge on Perilloux’s record was expunged, FOX-8 reported. In the two months following his arrest, Perilloux resigned from the District Attorney’s office and was hired by the Parish Council as an attorney shortly after that.

According to The New Orleans Advocate, Perilloux apologized and said that he “sobered up following his arrest.”

4. Perilloux Was Accused of Sexually Touching Several of His Daughter’s Friends in 2017

According to Law and Crime, Perilloux’s victims were 14, 15 and 17-years-old when he inappropriately touched them.

Several accusations came out during the trial, as the then-teenagers described what happened to them when they were with Perilloux, according to The New Orleans Advocate:

• A 20-year-old testified that she had been friends with Perilloux’s daughter and was feeling sick one day in 2017. Perilloux offered to put some kind of ointment on her throat. She said she needed to put in on her chest and wanted to do it herself. He ignored that and, “smeared vapor rub over chest” and touched the side of her breast while standing in his kitchen wearing underwear. “It wasn’t like a few rubs and done. He put on a few layers and was spreading it out a lot,” she said.
• A different teenager said that Perilloux had touched her genitals inappropriately under a bathing suit during a vacation in Destin, Florida. This crime was not charged due to jurisdiction, but she also the victim of one of the felony counts against Perilloux.
• A third victim said that Perilloux insistently rubbed tanning lotion all over her even though she had asked him not to. “He rubbed it all over me. I just completely froze, tensed up and stared out the window the whole time,” she said. “I never wanted to tell anyone. I’m not going to say he’s wrong when I’m 14.”

Perilloux was also accused of asking one of the teens to “name her favorite dirty word” and when she did not respond quickly, Perilloux responded with the word, “p****,” The Advocate reported.

Perilloux’s defense attorney, Jim Williams, attacked the victims’ credibility and said that his client would “rather spend the rest of his life in Angola than plead guilty to something he didn’t do,” according to The Advocate.

The Advocate reported that despite not working since the accusations against him began being investigated in May of 2018, Perilloux was paid more than $250,000 for the 21 months he spent awaiting trial.

Perilloux resigned in September.

5. A Judge Called Perilloux a ‘Creepy Dad’ During His Sentencing

The New Orleans Advocate reported that a six-person jury found Perilloux guilty of three felony counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile and the judge of the case — ad hoc Orleans Parish criminal court judge Dennis Waldron — found Perilloux guilty of a misdemeanor count of sexual battery. Perilloux, who was facing more than 20 years in prison, was jailed by Waldron pending his sentencing because, Waldron said, “an ankle monitor is not going to keep him from jumping off a bridge.”

Perilloux has maintained his innocence and his lawyer, Williams, said that he would appeal the conviction with different attorneys, The Advocate reported.

Perilloux was sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison: three consecutive 4-and-a-half-year sentences for each felony count and a half-year sentence for the misdemeanor count, The Advocate reported. During the sentencing, Waldron referred to Perilloux as a “creepy dad” and a “middle-aged man” who saw teenage girls as “objects to satisfy his carnal desires.”

“He clearly appears to not have accepted any responsibility for the actions he’s committed,” Waldron said, according to The Advocate. “It’s the duplicity of all of this that causes the court great concern.”

Perilloux currently appears under the parish’s sex offender registry.

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